The Ukrainian court passed the first sentence for a war crime committed in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Two former SBU employees were sentenced in absentia to 9 and 10 years in prison.
This was reported by the prosecutorʼs office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.
Prosecutors proved in court that the convicts imprisoned and tortured Ukrainian Euromaidan activist Oleksandr Kostenko. This is the first sentence for violating the laws and customs of war (Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) in Crimea.
After the Russian occupation of the peninsula in 2014, former members of the Security Service defected to the enemy. They went to work for the so-called Directorate of the FSB of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol.
At the beginning of 2015, convicts kidnapped and imprisoned Ukrainian activist, participant of the Revolution of Dignity Oleksandr Kostenko. He was tortured with electric current, beaten and threatened. In this way, the traitors tried to get a confession to a crime that Kostenko did not commit — the beating of an employee of the "Berkut" special unit in 2014 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv.
In a few months, the occupiers started the trial against Kostenko. The charges against him were presented by the former occupation prosecutor of Crimea Natalia Poklonska. Later, for this case, she received the rank of general.
The Ukrainian court found former SBU employees guilty of committing a war crime.